Eugenio d'Ors

Eugeni d'Ors Rovira (Barcelona, 28 September 1882 – Vilanova i la Geltrú, 25 September 1954) was a Spanish writer, essayist, journalist, philosopher and art critic. He wrote in both Catalan and Spanish, sometimes under the pseudonym of Xènius (pronounced [ˈʃɛnius]).

Biography

Born in Barcelona in 1882, Eugeni d'Ors initiated himself in the modernist literary environments. He participated in his younger years, between nineteen and twenty-five years, in this aesthetic. He studied law in Barcelona and received his PhD degree in Madrid.

He collaborated from 1906 on in La Veu de Catalunya and was a member of Catalan Noucentisme. He was the secretary of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans in 1911 and director of the Instrucció Pública de la Mancomunitat de Catalunya (Commonwealth of Catalonia) in 1917, but he left in 1920 after Enric Prat de la Riba's death. In 1923 he moved to Madrid where he became a member of the Real Academia Española in 1927. Returning from France, he joined the Falange Española de las JONS in 1937.^[1] In 1938, during Spanish Civil War he was the General Director on Fine Arts in the Francoist provisional government in Burgos.

A "hard-line fascist," he had both leftist and rightist friends among intellectuals and politicians, and got prisoners from the Second Spanish Republic released from Franco-era concentration camps.^[2]

He was the father of the noted Spanish jurist, historian and political theorist, Álvaro d'Ors, and the grandfather of Juan d'Ors.